Training, Curriculum Development and Consulting
Testimonials
Training Topics
Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth: Challenges, Resources, & Professional Resilience
LGBTQ+ youth need environments that nurture their development. They face unique challenges putting them at risk. Youth and their families need support and compassion. Professionals are facing ethical dilemmas and the risk of moral injury in the current climate. Professional self-care is critical so that you can continue to provide ethical, responsive care to the diversity of youth in the LGBTQ+ community.
Audience: This intermediate-level course is appropriate for all human services professionals serving LGBTQ+ youth.
Neurodivergence & Neuroinclusion
We will cover foundational knowledge about neurodivergence, including autism, ADHD, learning differences, and other cognitive variations. Participants will explore the principles of neuro-inclusion and learn how to create affirming, accessible, and strengths-based environments for neurodivergent individuals in a variety of settings.
Audience: mental health professionals in direct practice, supervision, and policy roles who seek to enhance their competency in supporting neurodivergent clients and colleagues.
Professional Self Care in Turbulent Times
Professionals are navigating an increasingly complex and turbulent landscape. The challenges for vulnerable communities impact both clinicians and the clients they serve. The NASW Code of Ethics affirms that you have both the right and the responsibility to engage in self-care to uphold your professional obligations. Your well-being is not just a professional necessity but a fundamental right.
Audience: Social Workers and all other licensed professionals.
Resilience: Learn Model Teach
Resilient behavior is a common occurrence, and an area needing continual growth. Being resilient allows us to make a difference without being consumed by negativity. Learning additional skills and tools increases our effectiveness and well-being. Modeling positive coping is a powerful message to our colleagues, families and children. Teaching resilience spreads health and well-being.
Audience: Humans, particularly those who help others.
Listening Matters
“There was nothing I could do to help; all I could do was listen.” We will cover the impact and nature of effective listening, which is a powerful tool for parents, professionals, and people of all ages. How we listen and respond impacts others’ well-being, builds healthy relationships, and creates bridges for communication.
Audience: Humans over the age of 8.
Preparing for Crisis Conversations
Crisis conversations, high intensity conversations that may include risk of harm or damage, can be exhausting. Looking through the lens of Trauma Informed Care principles allows us to consider our internal and external resources so that we can be better prepared to support our clients, and take care of ourselves. Planning ahead allows us to make a difference while caring for all parties involved.
Audience: Helping professionals, supervisors, and parents.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Teens
Supporting or treating a teen who is diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a challenge. It is also an opportunity to help a teen heal and move toward Post Traumatic Growth. We will review the diagnosis of PTSD & Complex PTSD and consider how the usual symptoms impact day to day life. We will consider ways parents and professionals can help a teen make developmental progress.
Audience: Parents and caregivers, caseworkers, therapists and other helping professionals.
Self Harm In Children and Teens
Self-harming behaviors are increasing in children and teens. We will review NSSI (Non-Suicidal Self Injury), eating disorders, suicidal ideation, and the ways they overlap. Understanding the risk factors, characteristics and purposes for these behaviors allows you to intervene with best practices. It is vital that we open communication and develop ways to support teens as they develop healthy coping skills.
Audience: Parents and caregivers, caseworkers, therapists and other helping professionals.
Suicide Prevention in Children and Teens
This course is for professionals who are assessing the needs of children and teens with suicidal ideation. We will review characteristics and behavioral indicators, along with their accompanying predictors of risk. Participants will practice ways to ask children, teens, and their families about risk and protective factors. Current research on best practice for prevention will be reviewed.
Audience: Case workers, social workers, clinicians, and/or supervisors working with children and adolescents.
Anxiety Disorders in School-Age Children
Anxiety Disorders are common and can interfere with the development tasks of school age children. Treatment of younger children is most successful when adults are able to support the child in “shrinking the worry monster”. We will discuss ways to align with the child and family as they create an action plan to best address the child’s needs at home, in the community, and at school.
Audience: Parents and caregivers, caseworkers, therapists and other helping professionals.
Supporting Parents of Children with Developmental Disabilities
Adults who are parenting children with developmental disabilities are at risk of negative impacts on their own health and well-being. Focusing on the needs of the adults increases their ability to care for their vulnerable children. We will identify ways that professionals can support parents in order to foster a collaborative approach to meet the needs of the whole family.
Audience: Human service professionals, caseworkers, and parents.
Baby’s Brain
From before birth into toddlerhood babies’ brains are changing and developing at an amazing rate. How they develop will impact the rest of that individual’s life. Babies learn by experience, and most importantly in relationship with others. Understanding what is going on inside a baby’s brain, and how our everyday interactions make a difference, is critically important.
Audience: Parents and caregivers of zero to three year olds, and helping professionals.
Ethical Humility in Action
The ethical humility framework supports social workers’ role in providing client-centered care. We will cover the micro, mezzo, and macro practice guidelines that support decision making in a variety of settings. Working with an ethical humility frame of reference improves client care and decreases professional stress by increasing collaboration with colleagues, clients, and other systems of care.
Audience: Social workers and other licensed health providers.
Ethical Consideration in Working with Youth
Ethical concerns shift and change as clients journey from being children, through adolescence, to legal adulthood. Ethical challenges can be opportunities to support youth as they develop their knowledge base, judgement, and critical thinking skills. It is vital to consider your frame of reference, role, and communication strategies in managing ethical dilemmas with youth and their families.
Audience: Licensed Social Workers and other licensed professionals.
Professional Presentation Skills
Stand out, share your expertise and contribute to your field by presenting at conferences and workshops. From writing your proposal to transfer of learning strategies we will cover ways to keep your participants engaged so that they take what they have learned into the world. Using inclusive materials, methods and content ensures that you reach diverse audiences. This workshop will equip you to develop a short presentation to share your professional expertise.
Audience: Professionals new to presenting or those looking to enhance their presentation skills.
FAQ
Yes, I have experience with both in-person and on-line training. I have trained in hybrid situations where there are participants both in-person and on-line at the same time.
I have experience speaking to groups from 4 to 100’s. My training content, style and engagement strategies are adapted to the size of the audience in order to best meet the needs of the group. I have led 30 minute focused webinars and three-day workshop style trainings.
Courses can be modified by time. Each duration offers a different level of detail:
- One hour webinar or presentation: Focuses on key areas of knowledge on the topic and share resources for further information.
- Two to three hour training: Covers topic with more depth, allow for increased participation and interaction allowing for more specific application to the needs of the audience.
- Six hour or multiple day training: Covers topic in-depth with time for specific questions, small group interaction, application to specific concerns, and practice sessions.
Individual Solutions LLC is not a CE Provider but will work with contracting agency to meet ASWB, APA or other standards for CE approval.
Training gives me hope. From parents and caseworkers to international experts, I have met 1,000’s of people who are working to make a difference. I love to connect with my audiences through storytelling, information sharing, laughter, and meaningful conversation. My role is to pull together information, ideas and resources then facilitate a training so that people can use this information, along with their own expertise, to create positive change.
Why Individual Solutions
Individual Solutions exists to help Individual’s create Solutions that work for them wherever they are on their unique path.
All my life I have been curious about people’s personalities and circumstances. As I got old enough to help, I focused on what might work for this person at this point in time. It is a never-ending fascination and source of fulfillment. Granted, ideas don’t always work and either people or circumstances may not be open to change. However, when an idea is tried and it creates a solution to someone’s need – magic.
So much of our lives is not our choice. We are born into a certain family, at a given time and place. The adults in charge of our early years shape our initial reality. The society we live in, and the language we speak, teaches us who we are in this world. And yet, we have choices. In little and bold ways, we make our decisions. We learn. We grow. We share. (Hence the offshoot of Individual Solutions is Learn.Model.Teach)
My career started in group homes for people with intellectual disabilities. As a home manager, and later a behavior management specialist, it was all about solutions for the individual. How do we help this particular person, with their unique constellation of needs, abilities, and personality traits thrive? I spent lots of hours observing, interacting, trying different approaches to get to a solution that worked for this person at this point in time. I cherished those colleagues who shared my enthusiasm for valuing people’s individual needs, personality quirks, and desires.
As I started my Master’s in Social Work I resonated with the phrase “start where the client is.” Training as a clinical social worker in my field placements, I learned new skills for assessment and intervention. After graduation, I worked with an incredible team at the Nisonger Center, OSU. This multidisciplinary team of professionals cared deeply about what was going on with each client and each family. I saw so much creativity and collaboration in those three years. This continues to be my model of how a team of professionals can work together.
I followed my time at Nisonger with work at a preschool for kids with special needs and then made the jump into mental health at an area mental health agency. Specializing in children and adolescents meant that I worked with kids at all different levels of development, with a variety of diagnoses, in every kind of family structure imaginable. In 2005, I moved into private practice and needed to name my business. Given my history, Individual Solutions LLC was an obvious choice.
The logo is a heart on a path. The heart represents an individual, and the path stands for one’s journey through life. I worked as a mental health therapist specializing in children and adolescents. I focused on helping kids, teens and families seek creative solutions that worked for them. I also offered training on child development and mental health in the field of child welfare. In 2017, I closed my private practice due to changes in the industry and in my personal life.
Now I work as a trainer, writer, and coach continuing to focus on child development, mental health and related topics. Individual Solutions is still the goal. I want to meet my participants where they are in their personal or professional life. I want to offer ideas to try, so that each person can create solutions for themselves or with the people they are helping. Each training group, each family, each person is different. What works for one will need to be altered to work for another to create truly individual solutions.
Laura Gaines
About Laura
Laura A Gaines MSW, LISW-S
About Laura: Laura is a licensed independent social worker with supervisor designation in the state of Ohio. She has a passion for child and adolescent development, mental health, trauma informed care, resilience, and reducing self-harm.
Laura’s work experiences include caring for adults and children with developmental disabilities, owning and operating a mental health private practice for children and adolescents for 20 years, and independent training and curriculum development.
Laura is an engaged and energetic trainer who cares about helping professionals and the clients they serve. Her depth of experience allows her to adapt to many different audiences and circumstances. She is available to develop and present training in person or online with strong experience in both Zoom and GoToTraining.
Reach out to learn more about trainings that would fit the needs of your participants.
We are excited about our newest project on resilience to be found at learnmodelteach.com.